I was pleased to participate in a panel at Yale Law School yesterday sponsored by the Catholic Law Students’ Association and the St. Thomas More Chapel dealing with the HHS Mandate.  I learned a great deal from my co-panelists, Matthew Boudway of Commonweal and Ashley McGuire of the Becket Fund.  I thought I could make myself most useful by focusing on the federal legal framework within which the mandate is likely to be assessed, and my comments drew from many of the posts and discussions about it here at CLR Forum (with maybe a little more emphasis on the individual assessment exception to Smith than some might think warranted).  And I was pleased at the number of interested folks who attended and the thoughtfulness of the questions.

Thanks to Christian Burset for putting the event together.